


Hold My Hand (and we're halfway there)

by formergirlwonder (orphan_account)



Series: Blue + Gold = Green [7]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Heavy dose of wistfulness, Phone Calls, Running Away, These people should seriously move, if only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 10:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10463073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/formergirlwonder
Summary: “What are you really asking, Betts?”“I want to run away.”It was a wholly inexplicable statement, and yet somehow, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for her to call him about in the middle of the night.Betty calls Jughead at 3 AM and asks him a question, even though they both know the answer already.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Somewhere" from West Side Story.

Jughead wouldn’t have picked up the phone at 3 AM for just anyone. His first thought when the vibration went off next to his head was that it was probably something dumb, like a call from the provider, or an AMBER Alert--

The thought about the AMBER Alert startled him into wakefulness, because if it was an AMBER Alert, here in Riverdale, that meant that someone he _knew_ was missing. His chest felt too small, suddenly, and it was hard to breathe, as if the vibration of the phone had sucked all the air from the room.

But Archie never remembered to put his phone on vibrate, so if it was an AMBER Alert, Archie’s ringtone would have awoken both of them. Besides, AMBER Alerts were sent out by text, Jughead realized belatedly as his conscious mind shook off the last traces of sleep. Nobody had been kidnapped. He was being paranoid, as he always was. At this rate, he might as well start teaching “survival” skills with Dilton. He should just go back to sleep, on the comfy, soft air mattress that he had somehow, miraculously, wound up occupying.

Jughead grabbed the phone from the ground, anyway.

“Betty Cooper,” the caller ID informed him, complete with a smiling picture of Betty circa age 13, wearing pink gardening gloves, up to her elbows in soil and petunias and begonias and violas and creeping Jenny.

Jughead’s breath caught in his throat as he sat up on the bed, squinting through the blinds to check Betty’s window. Sure enough, the light was on. He breathed a sigh of relief: she was calling because she wanted to talk to him, not because she was in danger.

Without any further hesitation, Jughead accepted the call. “Hey, Betts. Trouble sleeping?” he whispered, hoarsely and dry-throated, praying that he wouldn’t wake Archie (while knowing from years of childhood sleepovers that it was virtually impossible to wake Archie once Archie got to sleep).

“What’s your opinion of Romeo and Juliet? I know you referenced it the other day, but what do you really think?” she asked, softly, almost shyly, and he could picture her in her bedroom next door, curled up on her bed with the light still on, cradling the phone by her ear as if it was something precious. He swallowed and tried to think of an answer.

“The play, or the characters?” he returned, wondering if she had been trying to sleep and couldn’t, or whether she’d woken up in the middle of the night and called him to ask him a question about Shakespeare.

“The characters. I mean, I know they don’t make good decisions in the play. But do you think they’d have been better off if they’d tried to stay in Verona and make the best of everything?” If Jughead closed his eyes and held the phone _just_ close enough to his ear, it was as if she was right there, with him, in the pink plaid flannel pajamas she wore when the weather got too cold for henleys and shorts, her legs criss-crossed neatly, her hair spilling down to kiss the tops of her shoulders.

“I think the Paris dilemma forced their hand a bit,” he remarked dryly.

“I know that, Jug,” she reminded him. Of course she did: Betty was as much of a bookworm as he was a film nut. “But is it better to stay in a bad situation, or try to find a better one, even if leaving hurts people?”

This wasn’t about Romeo and Juliet. “What are you really asking, Betts?”

“I want to run away.”

It was a wholly inexplicable statement, and yet somehow, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for her to call him about in the middle of the night.

The resultant deduction hit him with the destructive force of a tsunami. “Betty, are you okay? Did something happen?” _Did your parents hurt you,_ he wanted to say, but that was going too far.

“No,” she responded, and was that a sniffle he heard? “My mom’s mad at me again, over the whole Polly debacle, because she figured out somehow that I had found her. So she was trying to get me to tell her where Polly is--Juggie, I swear, I’m fine, I can practically hear you hyperventilating. If I wasn’t fine, I’d tell you--”

“No, you shouldn’t,” he interrupted fiercely, “if you’re not fine, don’t waste time calling me, call 911, or the police, or even CPS, you have to promise, don’t you _dare_ call me--”

“Okay, Juggie. I promise. I swear, I’m fine,” she continued, placatingly. “I just had a moment where I was trying to imagine I was somewhere else, just to get away for a second, and I just thought--what if I _wasn’t_ really in Riverdale?”

“Betts--” he began, and stopped short.

“Think about it,” she breathed reverently, with the hushed tone of a child in a fairy tale, intruding upon a cave of magical riches. “We could get out. Just catch a bus one day and never come back. I have money saved, and I know the company that I interned with would hire me again in a heartbeat, and I can’t imagine they’d turn you down. We could find someplace really cheap to stay,” (his mind supplied the word homeless, which didn’t fit Betty at all), “or I think my old supervisor might let us stay with her for a while if we told her what was going on, she’s really nice, you’ll like her. We’re both academically accelerated enough that we could take our GED, no questions asked, and then we could work and save for college. You could finish up your book, and see if you could sell it to a publisher under a pseudonym, with all the names changed. And then we could apply for college as independents, and try to get enough scholarship money to make it through.”

The world she had sketched out for them lay out before Jughead, gleaming like a town in a valley, seen from the top of a hill at sunrise. “Running away didn’t work for Polly and Jason,” he observed, but she cut him off.

“But Juggie, don’t you see? We’re not--” for a split second, he thought she was going to say, “a couple,” which was probably fair, seeing as he still hadn’t found the words to ask her what they were, “--we’re not like them, Jug. I want more than Polly wanted, even though we both wanted out. I mean, Juggie, if it wasn’t for the baby, I think Polly would have stayed. She doesn’t hate it here, like I do.” The admission was made soberly, without a hint of venom, as if it was a long-understood fact that Betty Cooper hated Riverdale.

“You’re right,” he found himself saying, standing up from the bed and crossing to the window, even though her blinds were closed. “We could leave.” Saying it made it seem so much more real. Suddenly, Jughead could picture it all--telling his father he was going to fend for himself for a while, pushing the ladder up against Betty’s windowsill, catching her duffel bag as it fell, steadying her as she stepped to the ground, free for the first time in her life. Hopping on a bus, watching the lights of Riverdale fade away as Betty dozed on his shoulder, stopping in to see his mom and Jellybean, telling them he was his own man now. Leaving behind the label of “town drunk’s son” that defined him as a spiritual successor to Huck Finn, leaving behind the place where everyone knew him and feared him. Finding a future, with Betty at his side: just the two of them against the world.

He could make sure the Coopers never saw her face again, make sure that she never felt alone again, make sure that she never had to fear for her life again--

And then Betty spoke, so quietly he had to strain to hear, and his castle in the air melted instantaneously ( _“Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind”_ ). “We couldn’t be that selfish, though,” she sighed wistfully.

She was right, of course. They couldn’t leave, because Polly needed her and Archie needed him, because she was Veronica’s best friend and he owed Fred Andrews more than he could ever repay, because he’d promised his dad a second chance and she couldn’t abandon her niece or nephew without ever meeting them.

Betty hadn’t called to ask him to run away with her, she’d called so that he could talk her off the ledge, remind her how foolhardy and dangerous it would be for them to leave Riverdale. She’d called because she couldn't let go of the dream on her own.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Someday, though. We’ll get out of here, Betty, I swear.”

“Someday,” Betty mused, rolling the word around on her tongue. “I can hold on until then.”

“Goodnight. Try to get some sleep, okay?” Jughead whispered.

“‘Night.” He hung up before she could convince him to make Someday today by the sheer power of their longing. Tomorrow, they would wake up and go back to their ordinary lives: her to her imprisonment, him to his alienation. They might never mention this conversation again.

For now, his dreams were filled with open highway and bus seats and tiny houses perched on the edges of cliffs and _not-Riverdale_ \--and Betty.

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to leave a comment! (And stay strong...hiatus is almost over!!!)


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